jeudi 26 mars 2009

Classes have resumed on a 50/50 basis, but I will not be seeing you on March 24. I thus want to bring you up to date on what we can foresee for the remainder of the semester. If you have questions, please feel free to write: taffy.martin@univ-poitiers.fr

1) FUTURE SCHEDULE:

--Since March 24 was set aside for political action and since the week of March 30 is devoted to afternoon classes, our class will not meet until April 7. On that day I will announce the new class schedule and explain how examinations (contrôle continu) will be conducted.

--I am including a study guide for Zora Neale Hurston (below). This is work to prepare on your own. I will correct papers that are turned it.

Certain students have already turned in assignments. I have corrected them and commented on them and will return them when I see you. As I said in my last note, you are good technically but seem reluctant to deal with the content of the texts and paintings. Some of you translated passages from Louise Erdrich and John Edgar Wideman. These texts were, in fact, intended for the L1 S2 students, but I have corrected the translations that were turned in and am happy to provide you with suggested translations.

Your work on the passages from Kate Chopin Stephen Crane showed that you understood the texts quite well but overlooked certain subtleties.

Kate Chopin

Most of you assumed too quickly that Mrs. Sommers was “poor,” whereas she was instead in what we might call “reduced circumstances.” We understand from her thought process and actions that she had been accustomed to having money and simply had less of it now. You rightly commented on the portrait of the consumer society but only one person commented on the puzzle of the closing lines. What did the man with “keen eyes” see? Read that last paragraph again pay attention to the three forces at work: Mrs. Sommers, the man on the cable car and the narrator.

Stephen Crane

This was a difficult text, and you did well with it. Most of you caught the perspective of the narrator and the perceptions of the men in the boat. The answer to the question “how many men” is 8 since the captain saw “seven turned faces” (l. 24). The answer to the question “what is the antecedent of ‘which is never at sea in a dingey’?” ( l. 42) is “the average experience”. One of the differences between the painting and “The Open Boat,” is the men in “The Open Boat” are engaged in a struggle for survival whereas the men in Thomas Eakins’s painting, “Biglin Brothers Rowing” are engaged in a leisure activity. Both have realistic aspects but Stephen Crane’s depiction of survival is in part naturalistic whereas Thomas Eakins’s is influenced by romanticism.

4) STUDY GUIDE ZORA NEALE HURSTON

“The Guilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston, Background

Find information on Zora Neale Hurston (dates / place in Black American Literature / depiction of women in her fiction). You need not present this information, the research is just for you. The full test of the story can be found on the net. There is also ample material on Zora Neale Hurston and “The Guilded Six Bits” on the net in such places as Sparknotes. I do not mind if you read these sources, but PLEASE do not read Sparknotes INSTEAD OF READING the story itself. And do not try to present information taken from Sparknotes as your own. I have read the same material and will naturally recognize it.

Introductory remarks

The passage we will study is the opening of a short story which is concerned with money and its temptations in the life a young black couple, Missie May and Joe Banks.

At the end of the passage, it becomes clear that Missie May, who was initially skeptical of money and of Slemmons, is about to change her opinion. Later in the story Missie May goes on to betray Joe and sleep with Slemmons. When Joe discovers them in bed, he hits Slemmons and discovers, after Slemmons has left, that in the scuffle Slemmons’s watch chain with its gold piece was broken and that, when Slemmons fled, the gold piece which so fascinated him, remained behind. The gold piece changes hands and pockets and places throughout the story and becomes the emblem of temptation, illusory values and deception. Throughout these trials and temptations, Joe and Missie May stay together. Missie May gives birth to a boy, and while she is recovering from the delivery, Joe, having discovered that the gold piece was merely a guilded coin, goes to Orlando and uses the coin to buy candy kisses for Missie May, the same candy kisses Missie May had “threatened” to dig out of Joe’s pockets when they still were a happy, uncorrupted couple (page 27, line 49 in the passage in your course booklet).

In the closing scene of the story, Joe returns home and flings coins against the door just as he used to before money corrupted their lives. Missie May, who has not yet fully recovered from childbirth, cannot yet walk. When she realizes what Joe is doing, she crawls toward the door and says, "Joe Banks, Ah hear you chunkin' money in mah do'way. You wait till Ah got mah strength back and Ah'm gointer fix you for dat."

The story thus has a “happy ending.”

Questions for study

Read several passages of dialogue ALOUD so as to hear and decipher the black dialogue.

Compare the temptations of money as depicted here with those in “A Pair of Silk Stockings.”

How does Joe feel about his body? How does Missie Mae feel about his body? Why?

How is Missie May characterized? Indicate the fictional devices employed.

Lenora Carrington “Unicornio”

Who is Lenora Carrington? What is depicted in “Unicornio”? Discuss the colors, the composition… What is the role of women?

5) STUDY GUIDE EMILY DICKINSON

For our class on April 7, we discuss the poems of Emily Dickinson. We will divine the work in half. If you were born on an uneven-number day (1, 3, 5...), please prepare poems 1, 2 and 3. If you were born on an even-numbered day, please read and prepare poems 4, 5 and 6. Try to hear and describe the rhyme. Try hear and describe in your own words the rhythm. Try to say in your own words what each poem is saying. Then ask yourself what can be said about the collage on page 36 in light of the poems. Emily Dickinson is not easy. That is why I have saved her poetry for a class when we can work on the poems together.